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There are no links in this post. Just a quiz: Quick -- what's the difference between a tagline, a brand platform and a positioning statement? If you don't know, and you're in marketing, don't feel alone. But don't think it's no big deal, either. Kevin Burr, VP of corporate communications at Adobe, between bites of his chicken-cesar salad yesterday at the company cafeteria in downtown San Jose, expressed concern at how many marketing people still don't know what they don't know about the concepts and framework for thinking-through their mission. Or even thinking about it. Thinking and analysis, a big chunk of marketing, begins with language, terminology and definitions. If people don't have common points of reference, confusion and frustration -- and lousy marketing -- ensue. Burr knows his terminology. His company benefits because he does. Put in charge of corporate PR just as a new exec team led by CEO Bruce Chizen took command several years ago , Burr led the effort to position Adobe for the brave new world beyond the Photoshop market of "digital creatives". Adobe needed a new groove. Burr helped find it and things have been mainly groovy ever since. But it began with an understanding of marketing concepts and the language describing them.

OK, here are the answers:
-A tagline, which may haved gotten its name from radio and TV advertising, is a short statement or sentence placed at the end of commercials. In print, the tag usually appears adjacent to the logo and reinforces a thought or unifies a campaign. Toyota: "Moving forward". GE: "Imagination at work". AT&T: "Your world delivered". For better or worse, those tags represent billions of invested marketing dollars.

-Your brand platform, as jargon-esque as it might sound, refers to the basis of your product (or company) reputation -- the values, or attributes, that amount to the reason(s) people choose to do business with you. New brand values may emerge as you evolve strategy and invest in differentiating yourself by those new attributes. But once you choose your platform -- quality, security, technology, etc. -- you’ve got to secure ownership of it. For example, you must continually solidify it through business and product strategies

-The positioning statement identifies a product benefit or attribute that's all yours and yours alone: the reason the customer should buy your product. The positioning statement should be expressed in the emotions of the people you're trying to reach. It should describe how you want them to think about your product in their terms, not yours. There is nothing in marketing more important than the language of the positioning statement because it amounts to how your product gets communicated in the marketing plan and to the other functions. It assures that all of the marketing tools work toward a common goal. Or, as Kevin Burr might put it, no common language means no common goal.